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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A Saint on Death Row is an angry condemnation of the Texas criminal justice system. At the urging of a Chicago friend, Cahill stopped to visit Dominique Green on Texas' Death Row in December 2003 while on a book-tour stop in Houston. That visit sparked Cahill's outrage and colored his dark understanding of what can pass for justice in Texas.

No one escapes Cahill's wrath. The police, the state prosecutors, court-appointed lawyers, judges, juries, criminal evidence labs, politicians, the prison system and the U.S. appellate courts all played a role in the October 2004 execution of Green, who was 30.

MUSA QALA, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Most Afghan Taliban are willing to lay down their arms, a former insurgent commander said, but are afraid they will be killed for defecting because the government cannot ensure their safety.

As Obama unveiled his new strategy on Afghanistan, his officials attended a historic meeting with an old ene

Bringing together the multifaceted perspectives of a diverse group of people from places that are geographically, economically, and politically distanced is a task that is well suited to the environment of an art gallery. One of the most basic challenges of contemporary art practice is to forge a connection between art and what is going on around us every day, but while few people would deny that art comes out of life, there is still great skepticism surrounding the relevance of art to how we actually live.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

The choir burst into songs for peace, bringing surprised smiles from the audience. But the event had another twist: Most of the Holocaust survivors did not know the youths were Palestinians from the West Bank, a rare sight in Israel these days. And the youths had no idea they were performing for people who lived through Nazi genocide _ or even what the Holocaust was.

Friday, March 27, 2009

First, though, let's be honest with ourselves. This whole disruptive, destabilizing enterprise has one purpose, which is to supply the U.S. market with illegal drugs. As long as the demand exists, entrepreneurs will find a way to meet it. The obvious demand-side solution -- legalization -- would do more harm than good with some drugs, but maybe not with others. We need to examine all options. It's time to put everything on the table, because all we've accomplished so far is to bring the terrible violence of the drug trade ever closer to home.

"A significant part of last year's food price fluctuations were the result of excessive speculation in the commodities markets by the very hedge funds and investment banks that helped create the current economic meltdown," reads the letter, signed by 183 social justice and civil society groups. Speculation in commodity markets occurs when business entities -- such as hedge funds and investment banks -- take financial risks while buying or selling raw or primary products in international markets in hope of making profits down the road.

Good analysis fro the Independent in the UK. My hope is that Obama keeps his people on their toes and that if what they say will work does not - he will tell us it did not work and try something new. What I suggest is that he - grin - rent an old Peter Sellers movie called "The Mouse That Roared." Then announce that the Afghan war is won and withdraw as quickly as possible with the caveat - "If Osama bin Ladin shows up here again, so will we!

Every day, unemployed men gather under the elevated 7 train in Jackson Heights, Queens. Many of them are homeless. All of them are hungry. Jorge Munoz serves up home-cooked meals to them all, on his own dime.

St. Pete Times' PolitiFact busts Governor's anti-stimulus claims: To bolster his claim that the economic stimulus bill won't work, SC Gov. Sanford said the bill had drawn bipartisan criticism and named Alice Rivlin, CBO founder and Clinton budget director, as a prominent Democrat who said the bill would not help...We examined her full testimony.

"We want to make sure that Obama will fulfill his campaign promise. He said he would withdraw the troops in 16 months," Tsou said, adding that she was still hopeful that Obama would listen to people if they tell him what they want. "We are the people who can stop this. We are the people who can make President Obama do the right thing. It's very important for us to be here."

Yech! Totally destroying mountains to get at coal on the cheap is horrendous in terms of what it does to the local ecology but when it all washes down river to cities that get their drinking water from the Ohio and don't carbon filter their water as Cincinnati does and you have a recipe for more colon cancer, birth defects and lousy tea!

Afghans gather around the body of a man killed in what the U.S. military called an overnight raid in Bati Kot district in Nangarhar province, 140 km (90 miles) east of the capital Kabul March 19, 2009. Foreign and Afghan troops killed two militants in the raid against al Qaeda bomb-makers, the U.S. military said on Thursday, but angry protesters said the dead were civilians. (REUTERS/Rafiq Shirzad)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Good News! By 62 percent to 35 percent, the public opted for a larger and stronger government. Evidently, the big government is bad meme promoted by conservatives just doesn’t pack the same punch it once did.

Interesting video from Social TV in Israel of progressive Israeli's talking about how they believe Israel is abusing the human rights of Palestinians and Israeli's who protest their government's action in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Intolerable that we are allowing leftover Bush-immigrant-hating ICE employees crush and split up families! And make payoffs to contributors to Bush and Republicans from the private jail businesses that get $140 a day for housing non-criminal detainees with criminals.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

$140 a day for most detainees that we could keep track of until they leave by spending $18 a day for renting an electronic bracelet. 75% of detainees do not have any criminal record. So, was the last administration pumping up those in jail to "buy" support and look as if they were "doing something" about keeping us safe when most of the cash was being used to subsidize private jails who had many Republicans on their Boards of Directors. A billion spent last year here instead of many other good uses, or just give us back $1 billion!

Florida Issues: Man crusades against death penalty: "At the time, Melendez did not speak English and did not have an interpreter to help him understand his own trial. But he knew he was in a bind when the prosecutors showed the jury pictures from the crime scene."

Monday, March 16, 2009

An official Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showed a U.S. detainee population of exactly 32,000 on the evening of Jan. 25.

The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years.